Five Suu Kyi Supporters Arrested In Myanmar - Opposition

http://www.nasdaq.com/aspxcontent/NewsStory.aspx?cpath=20090317%5cACQDJON200903170416DOWJONESDJONLINE000095.htm&&mypage=newsheadlines&title=Five%20Suu%20Kyi%20Supporters%20Arrested%20In%20Myanmar%20-%20Opposition

YANGON (AFP)--Myanmar authorities have arrested five members of detained democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi's party, a spokesman said Tuesday, as the U.N. chastised the regime for its harsh treatment of dissidents.

Four men and a woman who worked as organizers for the National League for Democracy, or NLD, party were arrested last week in the commercial hub Yangon, said NLD spokesman Nyan Win.

"We do not know yet why they were arrested or where they were taken," Nyan Win said. "Their family members also want to know about them, and are worrying so much...We are still investigating."

A report Monday by the U.N. special rapporteur on human rights in Myanmar, Tomas Ojea Quintana, said many of the more than 2,100 political prisoners held in Myanmar have been sentenced in flawed, closed-door hearings.

Detainees suffered from a lack of medical care during imprisonment and from " physical ill-treatment" during interrogation, he added.

Quintana visited Myanmar from Feb. 14 to 19, and a regime official who didn't want to be named said the special envoy's request to meet Aung San Suu Kyi was rejected.


Myanmar's courts have handed out heavy jail terms to dozens of pro-democracy activists in recent months, many of them involved in protests led by Buddhist monks, which erupted in 2007.

Rights groups have accused the junta of trying to suppress any dissenting voices ahead of scheduled elections in 2010, which have been derided as a sham by activists because the polls bar Aung San Suu Kyi's participation.

"It is impossible to be all-inclusive in the coming 2010 elections by putting politicians in prisons," Nyan Win said.

The NLD won the country's last elections in 1990 but the junta never allowed them to take office, instead cementing their decades-long grip on power and keeping Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest for most of the last 19 years.

Myanmar has been ruled by the military since 1962.


(END) Dow Jones Newswires
03-17-090416ET
Copyright (c) 2009 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.